Through many years, private persons as well as restaurants have used combinations of market sunshades and terrace heaters for providing comfort and warmth in periods where the temperature drops so that it is comfortable to sit in the outdoors.
For cafés and restaurants there is the advantage that the period for serving in the outdoors can be prolonged, hereby increasing the number of guests.
The traditional solutions are unfortunately associated with drawbacks, partly of visual and partly of technical character. Visually, many separate terrace heaters and separate sunshades may give a disorderly impression, appearing unfavourable to a harmonic combination of tables, chairs and sunshades. The sunshades will usually be provided for shading and high temperatures, but are also provided for prolonging serving in the outdoors when the temperature falls and a risk of dew is present. Terrace heaters will thus often appear visually as a foreign element which does not fit into the traditional environment.
Terrace heaters are known as separate independent units but may also be mounted on walls, e.g. in connection with canopies mounted on the house wall or combined with free-standing sunshades.
At the same time, the use of terrace heaters and sunshades may be unsuitable due to the fire risk when the terrace heaters are placed under the sunshades.
Furthermore, the use of separate sunshades and terrace heaters would be unsuitable due the space taken up with these, with consequent limitation of the access to tables and chairs.
Previously, there have been proposals to combine a sunshade with a terrace heater. From WO 98/58211 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,336,450 are known combinations of sunshade and terrace heater as mentioned above. These prior art designs have the advantage that a sunshade canopy is provided outside the reflector plate so that it is easier to retain the heat developed by the heater element and which the reflector plate directs at persons sitting in immediate vicinity of the terrace heater. In the area under the sunshade canopy, a greater heat comfort may thus occur.
These combination units will be advantageous in that there is only one vertical columnar support of sunshade as well as terrace heater.
However, they are associated with drawbacks as the terrace heater cannot be used separately or with collapsed canopy. Furthermore, there will also be a risk of fire injuries if persons are touching the support rods for the sunshade canopy.
The prior art sunshades, terrace heaters and combination units are also associated with the drawback that they do not include any light source. In connection with using traditional terrace heaters in the evening and night hours, the presence of a light source is often required.